


twin high maintenance machines

by MaySparrow



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Anxiety Attacks, Chara lives AU, Depression, Friendship, Gen, Implied Past Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Mentally Ill Chara, Post-Undertale Pacifist Route, Spoilers - Undertale Pacifist Route, Undertale Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-09-12 08:15:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9063799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaySparrow/pseuds/MaySparrow
Summary: i am gonna make it through this year, if it kills me.vignettes about sans and chara, post pacifist.





	

**Author's Note:**

> 2016 sucked. take this. 
> 
> slightly in relation to some works from "what happens when we reach the sun", but not at all necessary to read together. anyway I'm going to set the concept "Sans and Chara would hate each other post pacifist" on fire.
> 
> thank you to Tib for beta-ing, you can find her at [@faerendipitous](http://faerendipitous.tumblr) on tumblr!
> 
> warning: some scenes include brief descriptions of anxiety attacks, and mentions of a previous suicide attempt. you played this game. you know what i'm discussing. for those who'd like to skip, these take place in late december and mid july.

**late september**

“I don’t understand.”

sans stares at the sky. the kid in the green sweater curls and uncurls their hands. nervous little fists.

“Did I do something wrong? If I did, please just tell me.”

this is awkward. this is really awkward. a kid walks out of the underground after being dead one hundred years, tells him they look up to him, and he’s supposed to take that as a compliment?

“look, kid. you didn’t do anything, okay? but i don’t know you.”

“You don’t _trust_ me,” comes a sharp retort. he doesn’t recoil, but his eyes are certainly scanning them, eyeing the way their teeth are bared. their eyes (red, red, red) are wet but don’t spill over. “But it’s not because I’m some stranger! You didn’t care about that with Frisk.”

“i _know_ frisk—“

“You didn’t know Frisk when you saw them! You saw a human with a red soul and you were still _nice_ to them! You still took them out to dinner _twice_ and made jokes, and you even guessed what they could do and you were _still nice!_ Despite all that!”

despite the sunlight, they shiver. sans feels the tension in his jaw.

“You still judged them _good_. I don’t—why am I different? I had to have done something wrong for it to be different!”

“alright,” he says. they snap to attention with a flinch. his carpals curl to fists in his pockets. “look. you said it yourself. i figured out what frisk could do. but i also figured out the kind of person frisk _was_ by then.”

and then sans turns, and looks at them fully, and his eyelights go out. “what about _you_ , huh? i don’t _know_ you. you might know me but i don’t know _you,_ which is a hell of an impression to make if you were there the whole time. you were, right? s’why you _know_.”

he thinks, maybe, they are hyperventilating. he goes on anyway.

“and i know what that soul can _do_ now, don’t i? and i don’t know _you_. i don’t know if you’ll decide to undo everything your so called _best friend_ did. all that hard work, everything frisk went through, and put us through. how am i supposed to know you won’t take it all away, just because you _can?”_

when did they start balling their hands into their sweater? he doesn’t know. he doesn’t think he can find it in him to care. he’s more focused on the ugly laughter bubbling out of them, that they try to stem off with their fingers. it’s offsetting, like the smile behind their hands. like the tears that are falling into the grass.

“Ha! Haha! That’s what this is? That’s what this is! That’s—that’s hilarious, oh god, oh my god, I’m such a fucking idiot! Of course that’s what it is!”

chara looks up at him, laughing and sobbing, and struggling to breathe. he nearly winces at the pitch their voice takes.

“You think I can do that?! That’s _never_ been a thing I could do! I can’t SAVE! I can’t—I can’t do any of that! That’s not my ability! I can’t go back! I can’t do anything!”

they grin, wide. it looks painful.

“S-so joke’s on you! You’re being an asshole for _nothing!_ ”

what constitutes as sans’s stomach bottoms out. he wonders if it’s out of guilt, or disgust.

—

**mid november**

letting papyrus cook was a mistake, but tori doesn’t know that yet. it’s the first time she’s let him do it, and nothing’s on fire, so it’s fine. everything is fine. the sauce smears can be wiped off the walls. the spaghetti sticks upright, half blackened, covered in raw tomato.

frisk only takes a bite, appeases papyrus. tori is… nice, about it, and feigns satisfaction. later she’ll sneak down to the kitchen and cut herself a slice of snail pie. sans has long trained himself to fake it, and he only has to taste it for a second before it dissolves. it’s fine.

chara, though. chara eats every bite off their plate, like it’s the best meal they’ve ever had. or the last they’ll ever have. papyrus is flattered beyond flattery. chara smiles pleasantly, thanks papyrus for the food, and then they do the dishes, all by themself. like an obedient child. it’s kind of creepy.

for half a second, sans catches himself wondering how they were trained to do that.

—

**late december**

“ _kid_ ,” he says warningly, but too late—chara’s already buried their hands into their hair, tearing their blunt nails over their scalp over and over, breaths short. in a quick motion, he crosses the room and yanks their hands down by the wrists. those quick breaths turn into sobs pretty fast.

“jesus christ— _breathe—“_

he hates it. it’s bad. it’s almost too much for him to handle? he’s never dealt with this—not quite like this, anyway. it’s one thing to want to lie down and not mind it if something accidentally dusted you, and another thing entirely to be so full of horrible emotion that you want to hurt yourself in any way you can. he’s not even sure he’s doing the right thing here, holding them down like this to prevent them from causing any lasting damage. but he doesn’t exactly have a lot of options?

where the hell is toriel?

—

**early february**

“So when are you gonna kiss my mom dude.”

sans would jump 3 feet into the air if he had that sort of energy to respond to the kid behind the couch. goddamn, don’t they know not to sneak up on old people who are napping. he tells them as much.

“You’re not old and you’re not napping. When are you gonna do it.”

he manages to turn his teeth into a scowl. chara pays it no mind, dropping onto the other end of the couch.

“look,” he says, striving to keep the impatience out of his voice, “i get why frisk is all gung-ho about me and tori, but you’re a different story. don’t you think she and your dad should be together, or something?”

chara scoffs a bit and pulls their feet onto the cushion. he bats at them; they wiggle their bare toes in his general direction immaturely. “I’m not stupid. We all know that isn’t going to ever happen, and I’ve got to accept that along with everything else, don’t I? Besides, your crush is painfully obvious, and believe me, she feels the same. Just do it, man.”

weird kid. he settles back into his seat, sliding his eyesockets shut, and opts for the truth. “we both know she can do better than me.”

“Okay, I know you believe that, and I know you think _I_ think that, but amazingly enough, you’re a numbskull, and also wrong. Incredibly wrong.” a toe pokes him in the femur, through his sweats. he ignores it.

“Sans. Seriously.”

nope.

“Seriously?”

mhm.

chara groans, and he hears them squirming on their cushion, before a pillow is plopped unceremoniously against his hip and their weight rests against it. wow. hello there. he finally slits an eye socket open and it meets a bright red pair, squinting very seriously at him upside down.

“You’re the best thing that ever happened to her since she left New Home. The _best_ thing. I’m not making this up, or being overdramatic. She can’t do better than you.”

huh. sans blinks at them blearily. they pat his knee.

“You’ve got children’s approval. Smooch the goat mom.”

—

**early april**

sans plops himself down against the side of the bed frame and nudges the paper plate of cut up hot dog pieces under it. there’s no response and he’s not expecting one.

“you don’t have to come out, ‘kay? s’fine. but eat so your mom doesn’t worry about that.”

there’s no sound from under the bed, not even the rustle of someone reaching for the plate. he doesn’t sigh. it’s fine.

“they’re not mad. and they’re not gonna hurt you. they’re not gonna yell, or hit you, or kick you out.”

no response.

sans doesn’t…. _get_ this. not really. this isn’t a thing monsters experience, you know? a lot of things happened to chara before they fell, that made them scared. that stuff doesn’t go away easy. that much he comprehends, at least.

he wonders if they fell asleep down there. probably not. they’re probably too uncomfortable and stiff, and expecting some attack. they’re gonna be disappointed, though. it’s just sans. sans the skeleton. he curls his toes in his slippers, and yawns.

“it’s just you and me.”

when he wakes up, the paper plate is by his knee. it’s empty.

—

**mid june**

fourth time this week. chara hisses their breaths in and out, not nearly enough to get through their system and calm them. their entire face is scrunched. they look like frisk, except frisk doesn’t sob like this.

sans is getting good at this. he’s getting better at wrapping a bony arm around his kid’s shoulders and letting them cry into his shirt at 2 in the morning. he’s getting better at mumbling comforts, at getting their breathing under control.

“he was _right there_ , he was _in my arms_ , I _had him,_ I can’t I can’t I can’t”

he understands.

it’s not always the same dream but it’s always asriel, asriel, asriel. can’t find asriel, can’t reach asriel, can’t get to asriel in time. lots of dust. lots of flowers. lots of waking up and crying, crying, crying. he can’t find it in him to blame them for it. it’s their brother.

they’d do anything for their brothers. that’s why he gets it.

“I _had_ him sans I _had_ him”

“i know, kid. i know.”

—

**mid july**

they hesitate with their words, thinking it over carefully. patiently, sans steeples his fingers under his chin and peers at them from across the kitchen table. when chara speaks, their voice is laced with uncertainty.

“Determination… manifests in different ways. At its core, it’s refusing death. For Frisk and Flowey, that was through SAVING and RESETing. For me, though, and for the amalgamates, it was just refusing to accept that death was imminent.”

“let’s say i believe that—let’s say you’re right,” he corrects himself quickly, eyeing their reproachful look. “you still _died_. but you came back, later.”

the kid bites into the flesh of their lower lip, squinting hard. sans looks away. they look like their sibling, like this.

“That’s right,” they finally say, more to themself than to him. “You don’t remember the fight with Asriel.”

“excuse me?”

their eyes return to meet his. chara clears their throat.

“It…. took a while, for me to die, when I was sick. Even though that… was the goal, my soul acted out of self preservation. But I finally did stop _living_. Because… I didn’t want to, I think. I stopped refusing the inevitable?”

it strikes him, in this moment, how morbid this conversation truly is? they’re talking about this child’s own death. their own suicide.

like it’s no real big deal.

he feels a touch ill. they don’t seem to notice.

“But, I guess part of it was still stuck to my body. Mom took me from New Home, and to Ruins. Frisk landed on my grave and I think my soul recognized that determination.” their fingers press to their chest, curling into the fabric of their t-shirt without much thought behind the action. “Not that I’d know for sure. The thing’s got a mind of its own, I swear.”

“but you’re back.”

they nod. “Yeah. As we… progressed through the Underground, I woke up more. I was… not the best person?” they hesitate—rephrase. “The Underground had changed a lot, and it scared me a lot. Frisk managed to tough through me being anxious and terrible, though.”

here, they laugh humorlessly. “I just saw everyone as a threat. And after I realized what I was doing, I was guilty beyond belief. I guess you could say I had— _have—_ a lot of self esteem issues. Honestly, Frisk’s a hero, for putting up with everyone trying to kill them and _me_ at the same time.”

“kid,” he interrupts, before they can spiral into a loop of self-disgust, “that doesn’t answer my question.”

they wave him off. “I’m getting there. In any case, we made it through the Underground to New Home. We fought Flowey, who’d absorbed the souls, and then Frisk’s save put us before Asgore. We managed to go back at that point, and that’s when we found the Amalgamates. That’s when we found out what happened to Asriel. And, when we got to the castle again, you all were there. You remember that?”

sans nods. he remembers seeing tori for the first time—despite the haze of what happened next, he’s got the memory of seeing her smile engraved in the back of his skull.

“And Flowey took everyone’s souls. All the human ones too. And he was Asriel again, and that was when I—“

their hands are one their chest again. they force themself to release.

“What happened was my fault. I couldn’t go back and undo it. But he was _right there_ , so I wouldn’t let Frisk get stuck going back, over and over. So. They saved Asriel, and everyone. And he broke the barrier.”

a pause. sans exhales, trying to be patient.

“ _and?_ ”

“… My soul was a lot stronger than it had been, when Frisk fell. It could refuse, but I didn’t think I deserved to be alive. Frisk spent the entire time Underground and the first week on the surface trying to get me to believe that I deserved to share it with them.”

chara stares at the table.

“I don’t remember what caused it—I just remember something so trivial making me so happy, and thinking _I want to be a part of that. I want to be alive._ And then I woke up, on the flowers.”

the quiet fills the kitchen. tori will be home soon, from her school, and sans should start dinner.

chara stares hard at the wood spirals on the table, and he thinks he can hear the question they don’t ask.

_do you think I made a mistake?_

_—_

**late august**

_“—my broken house behind me and good things ahead, a girl named Cathy wants a little of my time, six cylinders underneath the hood crashing and kicking, ah-ha, listen to the engine whine—“_

“how did you find an album from 2005,” sans says as he hops onto the edge of their bed with a plate. he offers chara half a grilled cheese. they accept it and talk with their mouth full. bad influence.

“Wi’f skill, and a lo’ of beggin’ Al’ph’s—“

“swallow.”

they make a face, bulging their cheeks. brat. he reaches to tweak their nose, and chara dodges with finesse. they swallow.

“With much skill, and lots of begging Alphys to fix a very old CD player. Maybe some blackmail.”

he bites into the other half of their grilled cheese, and ignores the sound of their protest. “do i have to do damage control.”

“It was a joke.”

“much skill. such humor.”

“Stop.”

“can i offer you an egg in these trying times?”

“Why did I show you memes.”

“why do you show me anything.”

a huff. he grins, genuinely. chara grins back, just as wide, if a bit mocking. they bite into their grilled cheese again, and drop against the mattress. sans joins them.

“Hey,” they say in a soft voice, staring up at the ceiling, where frisk has pasted little glow in the dark stars. he turns to look at them without moving. “Do you still not trust me? Because. It’s okay, if you just tell me. I just. We’ve been getting along better? And I—I don’t want to get my signals crossed.”

sans doesn’t say anything.

“…yeah. I guess that’s what I thought. Sorry.”

“you know, you’re quick to think everyone hates you.”

“Hm?”

“let’s see what we got here.” he counts off on his fingers. “mentally wrecked, very tired pun lover in baggy clothing. has a dorky brother. would do anything for that guy. makes bad jokes. has ridiculously low self esteem. scared, a lot of the time, and does a lot to make sure it doesn’t show nearly as bad.”

“I don’t—“

“not done. an individual with an attitude designed to deflect too many questions. an individual with a practiced and perfected smile. also, creepy eyes. apparently, everybody loves ’em, no matter what this person thinks. it’s weird. everybody cares, and it doesn’t make sense.”

his hands drop back onto his chest. “now, am I talking about you, or me?”

“Sans, come on.”

“come on, _nothing_. i was being hard on you. i was being an ass, no bones about it. there’s no excuse for it, ‘kay? i’m not above admitting that.” he bites into the grilled cheese, surprisingly aggressive. it tastes good, for something he made himself. gold star. “i’m judge, right? as judge, i’m makin’ a verdict.”

they go still. their eyes dart in every direction that’s not his.

“you’re a good kid. you’re not exactly innocent, or naive, but you’re not bad. no matter the stuff you’ve been through, you’re doing fine.”

their breath catches in their throat. sans sits up, turns to face them fully. stares at them until they look him in the eye.

“you gained love. and i’m counting on you to realize that.”

the music’s filling the bedroom. chara sits up. their mouth is a thin line of worry.

“D… don’t be a cheeseball.”

“but my grilled cheese is too good to not share.”

it cracks the heavy atmosphere—they release a puff of laughter out their nose, eyes pinched shut. frisk, rubbing off on them. sort of hesitantly, sans pats their hand with his own bony one. he’s worried they might start crying, but they don’t.

_“there will be feasting and dancing in Jerusalem next year—“_

“Thanks, Sans. Thank you for giving me a chance.”

there’s a bubble of emotion in his chest. later, he’ll recognize it as pride.

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> thoughts on chara’s DETERMINATION abilities [here](http://queenburd.tumblr.com/post/151564851556/starburd-ive-always-hypothesized-that-chara).
> 
> see all my Undertale ramblings [here](http://queenburd.tumblr.com/tagged/May-talks-about-undertale).


End file.
